The Survivor eBook

which comes for these things, Cicely, is a strange,
haunting thing. You cannot escape from it.
It is a sort of bondage. The winds seem to tune
themselves to your thoughts, the sunlight laughs away
your depression. Listen! Do you hear the
sheep-bells from behind the hill there? Isn’t
that music? Then the twilight and the darkness!
If you are on the hilltop they seem to steal down
like a world of soothing shadows. Everything
that is dreary and sad seems to die away; everywhere
is a beautiful effortless peace. Cicely, I came
back from that tramp and I felt content with my lot,
content to live amongst these country folk, speak
to them simply once a week of the God of mysteries,
and spend my days wandering about this little corner
of the world beautiful.”

“Men have lived such lives,” she said
quietly, “and found happiness.”

“Ay, but there is the other side,” he
continued, quickly. “Sometimes it seems
as though the love for these things is a beautiful
delusion, a maddening, unreal thing. Then I know
that my God is not their God, that my thoughts would
be heresy to them. I feel that I want to cast
off the strange passionate love for the place which
holds me here, to go out into the world and hold my
place amongst my fellows. Cicely, surely where
men do great works, where men live and die, that is
the proper place for man? I have no right to
fritter away a life in the sensuous delight of moving
amongst beautiful places. I want to come into
touch with my kind, to feel the pulse of humanity,
to drink the whole cup of life with its joys and sorrows.
Contemplation should be the end of life—­its
evening, not its morning.”

“Douglas,” she cried, “you are right.
You know that you have power. Out into the world
and use it! Oh, if I were you, if I were a man,
I would not hesitate for a moment.”

The glow passed from her cheeks. She moved imperceptibly
away from him.

“Douglas,” she said, “it is of that
I came to speak to you to-night. You know that
I have a brother who is eternally banished from home,
whose life I honestly believe my father’s severity
has ruined. I saw him in London not long ago,
and he sent a message to you. It is very painful
for me to even think of it, Douglas, for I always believed
my father to be a just man. He has let you believe
that you were a pauper. My brother told me that
it was not true—­that there was plenty of
money for your education, and that there should be
some to come to you. There, I have told you!
You must go to my father and ask him for the truth!”

He was silent for a moment. It was a strange
thing to hear.

“If this is true,” he said, “it
is freedom.”

“Freedom,” she repeated, and glided away
from him whilst he stood there dreaming.